[SQUID]

If you think Reagan alone brought down the USSR your sadly mistaken. He gave a push to an already weak and sick giant.

[stop_fascism]

Funny how no one noticed how weak and sick the USSR was before Reagan destroyed it. The Carter administration spent four years trying to surrender to it.

[caltrop]

No, you're mistaken. Had Reagan not been elected, there's no reason to think the Soviet Union (even weak and sick) wouldn't have continued to snooker America's leadership for an extended period of time. I served in a military assignment in the former Warsaw Pact and was told by my counterparts that Reagan's election was immediately recognized by the Soviet military leadership as the beginning of the end. It's impossible for me to imagine the election of, for example, the election of George H.W. Bush instead of Reagan eliciting anything other than a hearty laugh.

[laconic]

As I recall, the "weak" Soviet Union invaded AFghanistan in 1979, laughed while American hostages were taken in Iran in 1980, aided Castro in Africa and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the early 1990s and developed a series of new startegic weapons that had US defense planners on edge. I guess this "weakness" that brought the murderous mess down in 1990 just developed all of a sudden during the 1980s when Reagan "just happened" to be president. Must have been jimmycarter's doin'.

[jla]

If you think Reagan alone brought down the USSR your sadly mistaken. He gave a push to an already weak and sick giant.

A lot of former Politburo members would, (and have), disagree with you.

Now, when your grandkids ask you what the USSR was, you just answer, "an evil place, whose leaders wanted to rule the world...until a brave & wise man named Ron came along brought them to their knees".

[Finalapproach29er]

Read: Charlie Wilson's War.

[Mihalis]

Clinton would have given a helping hand to keep the monster alive.

Reagan is the greatest, a true hero.